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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23422468">don't let me lie down</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenexit/pseuds/zenexit'>zenexit</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst and Romance, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Character Study, Child Death, F/M, Flashbacks, Grief/Mourning, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Pining, Post-Zombie Apocalypse, Sexual Tension, Slow Romance, Tragic Romance, characters listed in order of appearance, slow burn esque</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 09:42:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>13,249</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23422468</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenexit/pseuds/zenexit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I tell you, they were not men after spoils and glory; they were boys riding the sheer tremendous tidal wave of desperate living.”<br/>- William Faulkner, Light in August</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Bill Denbrough/Stanley Uris, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. bill: hollow nights</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>my favorite zombie universe i've ever seen is the last of us, so this is a similar rule zone to it. i just wanted to write some survivor/zombie universe for the IT gang, snippets for each character and some analysis combined with world building i guess.<br/>feel free to jump around, time won't be linear at all. there will be a chapter for each member of the gang, showing what they're doing. </p><p>!!!!check the warnings for each chapter!!!<br/>all violence and warnings are here just to be safe, but everything in this fic is very aligned with the it movies in terms with severity / content. if you can handle the movies you can probably handle this fic, as i think this is less intense.</p><p>chapter 1 warnings: character death (none of the gang), violence</p><p>title is from Bastille's Easy Days demo on Doom Days (this got out of hand edt.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When he was a kid, Bill could remember going to movie theatres. The way the dark room would be chill enough that his mother would tell him to bring a coat. Georgie had been too small to remember anything from then, he had been just a baby when everything had gone to shit. Maybe that was a blessing, and maybe it was a curse.</p><p>Bill was thinking about the later, the curse of not remembering what was lost, while he walked through the night with Georgie hopping alongside him. He was in a long yellow coat, or one that had once been. Sunshine yellow wasn’t very common these days, it was such a quick color to fade. Becoming something muted, a subtle happiness still trapped in the threads from a time before. Georgie was humming something to himself, a made up tune, while he puddle hopped. It had rained that morning, misty covering rain that had soaked their compound. Bill had heard the guards complaining about it, but he tried to block things like it out. It just leads to more worrying about everything and anything. </p><p>When it rained, it made it harder to see. No visuals could be dangerous in times like these. Rain soaked grey skies, thick and hard to see through. Supposedly there was a sun that was supposed to be poking through, but it never seemed to happen anymore. It was night now, only the lights of torches keeping the compound visible. There was some semblance to normal life here, or so the Denberough parents kept claiming when Bill was frustrated with how corrupt the whole thing felt. There was no one here who had been infected with the Cordyceps fungus, no one trying to crack skulls and eat out the insides.</p><p>
  <em> (Stop. Just write from where the action is, that’s what the audience wants, that’s what you want.) </em>
</p><p>Through a broken rusted out piece of fence, behind the corner of a house, one of the infected had broken through. One quiet enough to be by itself, at least for now. It had reached out for young Georgie, making his eyes widen with fear. He hardly had a chance to scream before his arm was being ripped into, flesh giving way to muscle and bone, and so much red it hurt Bill’s eyes.</p><p>And there he stood, for a moment that felt like hell in the way it kept stretching out. Georgie just kept screaming, the blood rushing to escape him like it seemed it had always wanted to. A blood that had known its time with this boy was as short lived as he. An end that existed right at his beginning. But if everyone was doomed to die, why even bother having them live?</p><p>
  <em> (This is stupid, it’s depressing.) </em>
</p><p>Bill had just stood there, frozen in his tracks. The moment was eternity. The kind of sight he still saw every day, the terror in his brother’s eyes following him into his dreams and inside of every moment. The terror that gripped his limbs then, how he had just watched him get torn into, teeth ripping into him, while filled with a horror he had never known to be real.</p><p>It had been dealt with of course, both the infected, and what was left of Georgie. He had been burned, leaving nothing left of the boy but ash. Bill didn’t remember that though. He didn’t remember anything other than the act of Georgie being eaten in front of his eyes, and waking up in his room. According to his parents he had come home with numb emotionless eyes, and had walked right into his room and gone to bed. He hadn’t spoken to anyone that night, or about what happened. He never did. Wherever that pain was buried it wasn’t going to come out, at least not to these people.</p><p>No one would ever hear Bill say it, there was no point. Why bother when they wouldn’t understand what had happened. Nothing in this world made sense, or maybe it made all the sense and the world before it didn’t.</p><p>This compound they called home was hardly one. It was a refuge from the infected, and that was all. The people inside it were corrupted, and Bill didn’t feel like he could trust anyone there. Not anymore, not after Georgie. Even his parents felt like such outsiders, like they were playing hollow roles in imitations of what their lives used to be. The goal was just to stay alive now, and it all felt so wrong. Bill didn’t want to be here anymore, but what choice did he have?</p><hr/><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>Bill liked those horizontal lines he had always seen in books, so he liked to end on them. He wasn’t sure what they meant, but they made good breaks for a passage so he would draw them roughly into the paper when he was done writing. It made sense, putting words made sense. It made sense of a world that didn’t matter anymore. A world in which god existed had abandoned and left to rot. </p><p>The compound was quick to wake. Humanity had changed like that, when you had to survive that was all you could do. The day began when the sun rose, and it stopped when it sank. Everyone would hurry inside to lamps that cast shadows that knew ends. In the dark of the fenced in town, you didn’t know what was there. If there was a fence that would break like it did for Georgie. The maintenance had changed for those things, but it was hard to do it constantly. It all depended on how bad the infected were that day, or if the guard was able to get them down. They didn’t usually last long, but they could be there for days sometimes. </p><p>The guard… That wasn’t nice to think about. Bill had planned to join them soon just to get out of this god forsaken place, even if he knew they were the worst of everyone trapped here. This was getting dull though, and he sighed, stretching out his back against a chair that had known better days. He liked to think it was just as uncomfortable then too.</p><p>Standing up, Bill stashed his papers in an old shoe box. He dog eared the pages so they would stick together right, and then stuck it under his bed. It wasn’t exactly hidden, but then again Bill wanted someone to read it or anything else he wrote. Not his parents, not anyone in this hell of a town, but someone. It probably seemed so inconsequential to want to be heard in this world right now, but Bill had been feeling loneliness for far too long. Maybe since Georgie, but probably since long before that. </p><p>There was nothing here, and he just wanted a reason to get out.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. stan: finally, rest.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>!! chapter warnings: major character death (check tags for spoilers of how)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Stanley had never really thought of his lot in life to be that bad, even with the whole world turned on its head. But right now, it didn’t really feel like there was any point in living. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There he sat, leaning against a tree staring at a night sky that seemed to just stretch onwards forever. There was nothing there to make it look like something was wrong. The sky didn’t know any better, and Stan wanted to lose himself in watching it. There was a light breeze, pulling at grass that had gotten wild throughout the years. It was honestly pretty, much more pleasant to look at than the chemically rich ones from his youth. The sky had stars in it again, rich colorful ones that painted the sky. They had come back, less pollution to push them away. It was funny how much the world had changed. Pulling everything back down inside of it. Slow and steady, the Earth took everything back. Stan knew he had to give into that soon too.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Earlier, it had been raining. The kind of rain that made everything grey, the sort that spread out in a light mist even when it wasn’t actually fog. A sort of  rain that clogged the sky and ground and made it seem like it was the only weather that could ever exist and had ever existed. Genuinely it was a beautiful sight, the sort of picturesque scene Stan would expect to see in a poster for Washington state, advertising for tourists. Something perfect, the sort of view that didn’t exist anymore. Only, now it did. Now that everything had gone to shit, the world was taking itself back.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Behind the tree, and thus behind Stan, sat a dark brick home. During the break when everyone had fled, homes like this were abandoned everywhere. It had fallen into ruin, grass and plants climbing up the side, twisting green against the dark browns and reds in a way that could be mistaken for beautiful if times were different. But the roof was good, the doors closed and locked, and that meant it was much more safe to be in. and that was where Bill was laying down. He was asleep in the double bed, mind gone somewhere far away and safe. He had never had the nightmares Beverly did... </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Stanley had laid there, eyes closed and breath hollow while he waited. He felt his heart race, running traitorous blood through his veins as fast as it could. Every breath he let into his lungs and wheezed out, controlling the labor behind so Bill could sleep, was filling Stan’s veins with fire. He wanted more than anything to let himself panic, to cry and wheeze and suffer openly, but that would wake up Bill. And that was the last thing Stanley wanted.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oh, Bill…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The time they had together had been far from perfect. Honestly, it was hell. Stanley smiled a bit and exhaled loudly where he sat. Raising a hand, he pressed it to his other wrist. It was hot, burning up feverishly. His blood was still racing, and Stan had felt his heart all night thudding in his chest. He didn’t know if it was nerves, or his own body betraying itself as it raced to fill his body with ____ altering fungus. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was starting to feel like his head was being filled with static, so Stanley let himself lay there. Let himself take a moment to stare at the sky and stars he had never known there were far too many to count.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bill… He wasn’t going to like this one bit. He was going to wake up tomorrow alone and not know why. Maybe he’d think Stan would be at the window, staring out in either wonder at the world or in fear at what was approaching them. Wasn’t it funny, how life had become that. Before everything had turned to shit, Stan had never felt so amazed at life. Now he was just staring at the sky and he felt more blessed than any man for being alive. More thankful for seconds left to stare and feel, to gaze, and to count his quick breaths.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They had become partners without ever expecting it. Stanley didn’t really care about finding someone, if he was being honest he didn’t care about much before he met Bill. He had always been the sort of man who would thrive the most in the ordinary. That wasn’t a bad thing, in fact Stan was happy as hell to think like that. He should be an average man, with a nice house and a yard. Probably a wife, and two kids running around. That would be heaven on earth. A nice quiet life, with regular problems and regular stress. Stan had never thought, never considered how things would go down. How a partner could come in any shape, any way, any form. It felt silly to be caught up on sexualities in times of crisis, but people still managed to feel just as disgusted as they always had by it. Hell, maybe now it was even worse. People could show their ugly cores now with no consequences, no protection. It didn’t seem the time for it, but was there ever a good time for intolerance?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Stanley had never wanted to kiss a boy before Bill Denberough. He had never wanted to hold one's hand, or hug one for just a little too long. But… It had never felt wrong with him. It had been as natural as breathing. The first time they had sat next to each other, their legs had touched. The first time they had been in bed together, neither of them was afraid to press into each other for comfort, for safety in numbers. Stanley had woken up to Bill’s mouth pressed into his neck, soft breathing while he slept quietly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Things had just kept going like that. The next thing Stan knew, Bill was almost always with him. They talked throughout their wanderings, held each other while they slept, and trusted each other with the most important parts of themselves. Stan felt like he knew most everything about Bill. How he wrote and hid it everywhere they went. Silly things, horror stories. It felt inconsequential to do now, but it kept his mind sane. It kept him in the moment, kept him clear headed. They talked about how Bill had been willing to do anything to get away from the compound. Stan knew it had been to get away from the ghost of his brother, a loss that hurt now just as much as it would have in a better time. Even if people couldn’t understand that, thought any death these days was a dime a dozen. They had forgotten how to help each other, to want to care. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He was honestly too good. There was just something about Bill that Stan was sure anyone could fall in love with. It didn’t matter who they were, Bill just had that kind of impact on people. He caught their attention, listened to them, helped them. It was good he had run away from the guard or the soldiers or whatever the hell the dogs wanted to be called. It didn’t matter. What mattered was Bill, and the time he had gotten to have with him. How it had meant more than any other time in Stan’s life had. He didn’t even know what kind of love it was between them, but he knew it made his chest ache.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ah, the aching. It was still there. Burning inside of him, ripping at his flesh and bone. He probably didn’t have that long left. Stanley almost felt like he was meditating right now, brain on an island all alone while his body slowly had the pain creep up. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Was there anything else? He wanted to think of the good things. About the blessings he had in this life. One that was short lived, on fire. In some other life he thought it would be better, but that was probably a tiny chance. There was nothing in this world or any other that was perfect. Maybe, the horrible thing was that every life was like this. It all ended, one way or the other. There was no avoiding that was there? All Stan could hope for was that this time, his body wouldn’t get back up when he was done.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hm. Maybe he could do something about that. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was a gun at his side that Stan had been avoiding looking at, trying to just take a few last breaths in peace beforehand. But he was probably pushing the time a bit too closely, it was time. He had left a note out for Bill, something simple with a touch of dramatism. Nothing like what Bill could write though, not even close.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Once the gunshots went off, it would wake Bill up. Stan could do the best he could to mute the noise, but it wouldn’t do much. Hopefully it would be quiet enough to keep the damn things away though.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Picking up the handgun, Stan stared down at it with indifference. There wasn’t time for hesitation, and if he had been able to see himself then he would have realized how brave he actually was.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One quick shot, pointed at the top of his left kneecap. It burned worse than anything yet and Stan let out a noise before quickly covering his mouth. Tears stung at the corners of his eyes, betraying him. He bit his mouth hard for the next one, drawing salty hot blood. But now both of them were taken care of, just in case. It </span>
  <em>
    <span>should</span>
  </em>
  <span> be enough when he blew his brains out, but there was no way to tell. Who knew if then he would feel anything at all, or if he would be just sitting in the back of his mind watching in horror at what his body did. Though, he was sure he wouldn’t be there. Maybe that was dark, but Stan was sure there was no one left when the infection took over. No soul left in the decaying corpses that roamed the streets so freely now. There was no feeling.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Or, maybe it was like Tantalus, and there was a burning thirst from hell that would never abate. An infection that creeped into your mind and actually changed the person that was left inside. Someone who couldn’t escape what their new rotting body demanded, no matter how grotesque it would have been before. If things went how Stanley thought they would, he was happy he would miss that hunger. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Wiping the tears from his eyes, Stan looked down at his bloodied mess of legs and wheezed. It wouldn’t do him any good to wait any longer than he already had, to keep trying to find time where he didn’t find any left. It was hard though, to think about what he was going to do. He sighed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He raised the gun to his head then, and let his last thought be one of love. Of the ones he was protecting, of the friends him and Bill were on their way to meet up with. How he would be safe, how he would have life and love again. Stanley couldn’t force himself to smile, he couldn’t even find it in himself to stop the tears from racing hot down his face. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Stanley pulled the trigger, and then there was nothing.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. eddie: run.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>!! chapter warnings: references to child abuse &amp; neglect, non major character death</p><p>so far my favorite chapter to write, really happy with this one!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Eddie left his house with only a thinly packed backpack strapped to his back. He didn’t have much of a choice these days, other than to leave his house. Once he had done that though, he would get to come back with whatever he had managed to steal strapped to him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In suburbia, he had managed to get by this long slowly working through the local neighborhood’s house’s food stores. His mother had always been kind of crazy, and she had kept a huge food storage up. They had lived off of it for the first year alright, but after that is when it had gone more to shit. She wasn’t a very experienced prepper, and more than anything held anyone who did so as idiots. Which, to be fair, they had been right about. Certain things had blessed Eddie when he got desperate. Their small home being in a large neighborhood, for starters. It had smaller other neighborhoods surrounding it as well. Behind Eddie’s house, less than a mile out, was a flowing river. He had found fishing rods hidden in a neighbor’s shed that he had managed to learn to work, giving him fresh meat to try to conquer. It was a sharp learning curve, but what other choice did they have?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sophia Kaspbrak did not trust anyone else. She did not trust her neighbors, and she did not trust the river. She did not even trust her son, especially when left to handle himself. This meant Eddie had to sneak behind her back to acquire food, while leaving her to pick at a store she didn’t realize he was stocking silently for her with what he managed to scrape together. Eddie was living like a rat now, and he knew that. He wasn’t certain how long it had been since the fall of society, since everything had gone to shit. The Kaspbraks had managed to keep out of it in large parts thanks to Ms. Kaspbrak’s shotgun, in another large part to her heavy antique furniture that had boarded up their house that first night. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>How old had Eddie been when this all went down? A question like this was a lot easier to answer than how old he was now. He felt like it could have been days or it could have been years since everything happened. He hadn’t bothered to try to keep track after three months, everything past that just depressed him. There was no help coming. Why would it? No one in the world knew they were here, knew to miss them. And hell, if people knew Sophia Kaspbrak and her son existed, they would probably go out of their way not to save them. She had been far from pleasant to anyone. In fact, she still had that attitude. If anything, in the fall she had gotten worse. Her bible was her best friend, but the God she turned to was a harsh one. One with fire and brimstone, who had brought this infection on the earth to punish the sinners. Only those of good faith and purity, the sort like her, would survive. Maybe she was right about that, Eddie had always thought. Had always thought, before he woke up to find his mother had passed away in her sleep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sophia Kaspbrak’s passing had been sudden. There were no doctors around, no morticians to analyze her decomposing body. Whatever it was had been natural, and Eddie had spent at least a day stuck in paralyzed shock. He had cried more than he realized he could, not thinking about it as the tears raced down his face. He had to get up though, he always did, to get food in his system. Her corpse had sat and rotted in their house for close to three days before the smell was too harsh and Eddie knew he had to do something about it. He had ripped a shirt to shreds, an old one he had outgrown and replaced with something from a neighbor’s closet, and tied it tightly around his mouth and nose. Then he had gone into the room, trying his best not to look at what was left of his mother’s wilting body, and wrapped her in her old soiled sheets. Tying it at the top and bottom, he knew this part would be the hardest. He had to drag her outside to the hole he had dug this morning, and make quick work of her. Eddie was lucky nothing had smelled her yet and come to feast on her and her son, so he had to do this as soon as he could manage. So he did. Eddie’s stomach pulled in fear and disgust, he had sat in his bathtub afterwards for hours. The water didn’t run anymore, but he closed his eyes, skin touching cool porcelain, and pretended he was somewhere else. Somewhere he could be clean and free of this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie didn’t mourn his mother’s death because he missed her. No, she had always been very controlling of him, even before it was such an unreasonable time for her nonsense. He mourned her death because she was all he had. Like Sophia Kaspbrak had wanted, she was her son’s entire world, and he was hers. Eddie was a plaything to her. A son she had wanted because everyone else had one, a husband she sought not out of love or loneliness, but a means to her ideal life. When Mr. Kaspbrak had died, she had snapped like a rubber band stretched to its limits. Her life had to be more controlled, then this wouldn’t happen again. Eddie didn’t get why he was alive and she wasn’t, but this was life now. He had to do something about himself, because that’s what he could do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Infection was the worst way he could die. The thought of turning into one of those diseased infected freaks was the only thing he dreamed about anymore. Of the infection crawling across his skin, trapping him inside it while he felt like he was boiling alive. How his eyes would glaze over, what would he even see then? What would he feel? It had to be hell itself. The kind of god fearing attitude his mother had always wanted him to have sank into Eddie’s heart when he thought about that death that would never fade. He couldn’t even let himself puke these days without sobbing, feeling his skin crawl as he imagined that might be the result of some spores hitting the back of his throat and infecting him. When this had all started, the Kaspbraks had watched it on the news. Seen how it came from some infectious mushroom, or so they claimed. Sophia Kaspbrak, the most horrible person anyone knew, had made a good point about the infection then. About how easy it would be for the government to blame it on a simple mushroom, and not experiments. Of course, the most important thing for her to note, was how she knew it was both.  She was nothing if not humble.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie had not been out to the city since he was a child, but he had found a map inside of a glovebox of a car that’s tires had rotted completely through. Then he had set out, walking with the sunrise to his back. He only had six rounds of shotgun shells left in his gun, so he hoped he could get by on his knife. Eddie was a far shot from a fighter, and wanted to get by without anything physical happening but there was practically no chance in hell of that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Watching the sky change colors and the sun rise was soothing. Eddie stared up at it with the wide eyes of a child. He had seen the sunrise more times than he could count from inside his house, but right now looking up at it something felt different. The way the sky stretched across the horizon, blue mixing together with pinks and yellows in a way that felt like dancing. It was happy, a painting the earth was making for anyone who was graced enough to just look up and witness. It was beautiful, and Eddie almost stopped walking to stare at it. Buildings and trees were there of course, but. It felt like the beginning of something. Something else, something completely different than anything else. It didn’t scare him, not like he thought it would. Change, rolling across the sky. It felt freeing, liberating. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Every step came just a little lighter then, and for the first time since Eddie was a child he wanted to run. An inhaler from the stock his mother had built up,which he had become too afraid to waste on small puffs, suddenly didn’t weigh anything in his pocket. If he could see himself, Eddie would be surprised to see that he was smiling. Smiling in a world where he was completely alone, fighting just to survive, not even to live. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The journey into town wasn’t particularly exceptional, aside from watching the world turn in front of Eddie’s eyes. It turned without burning, something he had forgotten it could do. Maybe what he felt for the first time in a long time then was hope. A feeling he didn’t even remember the last time he had, or if he ever had at all. One he wasn’t even sure he could name.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he had finally come to a store, it was empty. Eddie had moved forward to the next one, and had gotten lucky enough to find a bike outside of it. Still empty ransacked shelves, but he had already come this far hadn’t he? Eddie rode the bike further into town, the sun high in the sky. There was a strip mall of shops up the road Eddie was slowly navigating. It was filled with stores in all kinds of types of disrepair. Cars in the road were in all kinds of states. Wrecked, for the most part. Others having things stolen out of them, and more than half having some kind of body in them. Eddie couldn’t pretend it didn’t faze him, but he could hold his head high and keep pedaling to where he needed to go. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A major department store would be too quick to be hit, anything good already stolen from it, but Eddie tried his luck at it anyway. He brought the bike he had acquired inside with him, he didn’t want to lose it to someone else who might be around. There had been no sign of the infected around, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t other life. If anything, humans were twice as scary. They were unhinged, and had lost almost everything. That made people desperate. Eddie had only seen people in passing, but his mother had made him very aware of how much they wanted to hurt the two of them, and he had believed her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie walked the shelves, and moved his backpack to the front of his body. He walked calmly, brown eyes moving quickly to look in front of him and at his sides for anything he could use. There was hardly anything, but he did manage to grab a few quick candy bars to shove in his pockets. The front of the stores barely had anything, so just seeing those was a good sign there was more deeper inside. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As Eddie kept walking, he heard noises come from the front of the store and his body went cold. Someone else was walking through the door. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now there were voices. Faint, but unmistakably voices. Talking to each other. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fuck. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie moved quickly, jumping onto the back of his new bike and wheeling down the aisles. The voices paused, probably wondering what that noise was. Eddie had to get somewhere safe, and fast. He couldn’t let whoever it was find him and take him, hurt him, mangle and eat him. Who the hell even knew what they would do, he certainly didn’t, but it didn’t stop his mind from racing with all the possibilities and ways he could be hurt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie hit a wall then. Literally and figuratively. An aisle wall. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The front tire of his bike twisted to the side at the last second, stopping any major harm to his new bike. It didn’t stop Eddie’s body from slamming forward and off the bike. The aisle was practically empty, and he only had moments to curl his hands around his face protectively. The knife strapped to his side was thankfully sheathed, and the gun on his back wasn’t harmed. Eddie’s pride burned, as did his stomach as he felt like the wind was knocked out of him. But most importantly, it had sounded like thunder in the back of the store and now the voices were yelling, approaching quickly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Grabbing the floor, Eddie moved as quickly as he could to flip himself onto his ass and pull his gun out from behind him. He was at least ready to face them. To die if he had to, no matter how much his hands were shaking holding a gun he could hardly shoot. A gun until now he had been lucky enough to only have to use on the heads that poked around doors and windows and that belonged to what were basically just slow moving targets.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a group of young people. One, two, three… Fuck, there were five of them. Four guys, one girl. Her hair caught in the sunlight that poured in from the front of the stores blasted open doors and few windows. As for the men, one was tall, almost gangly, with shaggy dark hair and a pair of roughly taped up glasses pressed close to his eyes. Another with lighter curly hair, one with hair that hung in his eyes and a baseball tee, and the last probably the only one of them who had heard of cutting his hair, wearing it close cropped to his head. None of them were smiling, but they seemed just as startled to see Eddie as he was to see them. No one moved.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” the shaggy haired idiot said suddenly. “That’s my fucking bike.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. mike: know thy enemy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>got so excited to write mike's part, i skipped him up in my lineup. this is a huge buildup of lore, and an introduction into some background plot details that will hopefully help the losers place in this mess begin to make a little more sense. </p><p>!!chapter warnings: none :-) (outside of typical zombie violence!)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It was the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Art of War </span>
  </em>
  <span>that said “</span>
  <span>"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles”. Mike took those words to his heart, and when the infection happened he didn’t work harder, he worked smarter. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Infected. Zombies. What did it all mean? Where did it come from?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Zombies. That word brought to mind a certain picture, or at least it used to. Zombies were used in horror movies, the kind of monster there could be hundreds and thousands of. Like cockroaches, what made them so scary was how many would be laying in hiding. For every one you saw, a hundred more were somewhere just beneath the surface. They weren’t very smart, and a well aimed blow to the brain was the only way to stop them. Mike had seen his fair share of meat piloted blindly by the invading fungus, even after being completely split in half. Guts hanging out, their bloodied and cracked nails would keep dragging them forward forever until they were able to feed, to infect more. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Where did the word zombie come from? What did it actually mean? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Zombi, it was a Haitain French word. It referred to magic reanimating the dead, bringing them back en masse. Zombies now didn’t bring that image up, science fiction was a much more likely cause. The word had moved over to English in 1819, meaning one who would keep roaming the earth to torment the living. Yeah, that was true enough. Was it magic that brought these haunted corpses into being, some sort of art of the devil? Mike knew people who genuinely believed that, the kinds of people who blamed all of this on sinners. They were the sort who had no belief this could have been something natural from the Earth causing this, or that God would let this happen if he had any control. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mankind got to work on their own, didn’t they? Mike was raised Baptist, before he had lost his parents. The heavy word of the bible was with him sometimes, when he was in dark moments. He couldn’t quite say there was a god, and if there was he didn’t want to believe in one that would let this happen. These zombies had come from the earth, there was supposedly no denying it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Cordyceps. Those fungus had been responsible. In certain areas, the air would be so thick with the spores you would have to wear a mask to breathe the air or risk being infected. The spores diving deep in your lungs, and sprouting there. This is what met the bodies that were infected, what was left of them becoming dedicated spore factories. Only flames could handle them. But what had Cordyceps been before? A long stalk mushroom, in dark reds and yellows was how Mike knew them. It was ironic to think about, but they had been used in Chinese medicine before. They had healing properties. Now, all they were used for was rearranging your insides into something nasty and infected, turning you aggressive and making your only thoughts and purposes theirs. It had been from South America, the spores getting into food and then rotting peoples brains. The Government couldn’t respond to anything fast enough, couldn’t figure out how to fix things. There was no known cure. The greatest weakness of those infected was fire.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The infected came in multiple forms before their bodies would seek someplace cool and dark to die, in order to let the fungus in them properly breed. It was like this the body would finally know peace. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mike knew a few things about killing zombies. When the world had gone up in flames, he had stayed inside his grandfather’s farms property. They were armed to the teeth. Mike had been too young to do much then aside from watch. It hadn’t been that long then, since his parents had died in front of his eyes. A fire, ironic. Something that could save him now had hurt him the worst then. It was hard to keep that in his mind, as his parents likely wouldn’t be alive now even if they had lived. There was no point focusing on it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The farm had held alright, there was meat there was more than enough to care for everyone on the property. The crops left something to be desired, but Leroy Hanlon, wasn’t someone to fuck with. He had taken control of the situation, had half of their seed store planted. He knew something big was coming, and so it had. When the United States government had ordered it mandatory for all uninfected humans to report to newly designated compounds, it was land like the Hanlon’s that had been seized first. It was ironic, because Leroy Hanlon had been willingly taking people into his land, working to build the place up to take more people, to support his fellow man.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the government came, everything changed. The Hanlon farm was completely taken into their power, all assets were taken and ordered to be completely under government regulation. All people now residing on the property would undergo extreme evaluations to prove they were not infected, as would all who were now legally required to report to their closest center. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At first, Leroy Hanlon had followed orders. It was insulting to have everything he and his family had worked for years ripped out of his hands, but it had been promised back to him a hundred fold along with large amounts of cash when this infection had settled and a cure had been found. That all sounded well, ideal even. It was the sort of break where Leroy Hanlon got to help his community and fellow man, and profit from it. But of course, he was never in it for the profit. Genuinely, he wasn’t. It was something Mike knew about his grandfather, something he treasured and trusted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everything had gone to shit then. The government hadn’t worked fast, and there was no cure. Everything got worse, more people were dying. The number of bodies banging into protective walls that had to be shot down with military guns grew as Leroy Hanlon’s influence on his own property had waned. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The day little Georgie Denberough had died, an infected making its way through an unrepaired piece of fence had been a breaking point. A young boy. A child. Someone so innocent, had been the final straw that had broken the camel's back. Mike hadn't understood it then, had been too young to. Why this one life was worth the wrath that Leroy Hanlon brought upon the government, on his own land, on the compound. But it wasn’t just about this one life, about this one boy. This boy whose parents couldn’t even seem to get in arms about. This boy, whose brother’s eyes had lost all signs of life over. This was another in a pile of victims that Leroy Hanlon couldn’t stand by and watch grow. He had gotten his supporters together then, and they had taken guns given to the select few of them who had guarded with the government. They had moved in the cover of night, and stolen everything they could from the government. They took all of the seeds, they took half of the livestock, and they were gone by the morning. They had scouted for weeks ahead, to find somewhere new they could hold up. There was no backup for the government that would come in time to give chase to them, and they had avoided a blood bath. There were no lives lost that night.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mike hadn’t known at that time how to hold a gun. He only remembered his grandfather coming into his room with a stone faced look, and handing him one. He couldn’t practice shooting it without people hearing it, but he had shown him silently how to clean it efficiently, shown him where the sights on the gun were. And then, the night they had left, Mike had marched alongside him out of the camp, out of the only home he had ever known. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were stragglers that joined them slowly. It was when there was a good count of them the government finally made its move. Someone, and only god knew who, had moved with a group of rebels to ‘join’ up with Leroy Hanlon to tell them his location. When the government had moved on them, it was a massacre. Only, it wasn’t to the resistance. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A high vantage point had shown Leroy Hanlon they were coming, and his gun men in their towers had maken quick work of what could have been a bad situation. There wasn’t a single survivor in the enemy group. Of course, they all knew this wouldn’t be the last of them. They moved again. Always keeping one step ahead, the group managed to always have a backup location to move to, to keep its people safe. It wasn’t about running from a government that would come back with another head every time it got the chance, it was about avoiding the conflict. It was about staying alive. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In very direct words, Leroy Hanlon had told Mike that he would be expected to take over this after he was dead. No old man like him could be expected to handle this as long as he had, and he wasn’t immortal. Mike knew his grandfather would go down fighting one day, and he wanted that day to be as far off as possible.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Here Mike sat now, surrounded with his friends. His allies. The only people he could trust to not just treat him like the grandson Leroy didn’t want, but had to get used to. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bill had come in one of the groups. He had brought a gun, something rare. He had said with dark eyes and shaking hands how he had joined the guard, the sort of things that they expected him to do. How much they killed their fellow man, when there were so few of them left. He had been trying not to cry. Amazingly, he had managed to do this grand escape for himself and for others. Protecting a large group of humans on the move was no easy task, but Bill had done it. A man who had no idea how natural of a leader he was, no idea of his own drive. Mike remembered thinking how blue his eyes looked when rimmed in red.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They operated like a small party of field scouts. Their job was to look for large scale hits of food and supplies while picking up small harder to find items. Potential location scouts, picking up batteries and medicine and anything useful the group needed. They were essential, and it got Mike the field practice his grandfather demanded. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mike couldn’t bring himself to resent his grandfather for what he asked of him. All he wanted was to be able to meet it, to be the kind of man his father was. To be able to pull that trigger a little faster. To stop locking eyes with the bodies of people who used to be children, parents, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. The kinds of people who used to matter to someone, and still might. He wondered if his grandfather would hesitate locking eyes with him, or if he would kill him with the same experienced skill he had everything else. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie had joined them, and then Ben. A group of young idiots roaming the outside. They had gotten a little too big then to operate as one group, but they still managed sometimes. Eddie was good with his hands, fixing bikes and other mechanical things around camp. He had no training, it just seemed to make sense to him. Ben was… He was something else. But that could wait for another time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beverly was the one who pulled the trigger the fastest. She was sure of herself in ways Mike knew she had to be faking. But hell, if she wasn’t good at it. He caught himself staring at her sometimes, but more than that he would catch everyone else doing it. She was talented, and he wished she could take over leading over him. He would leave it to Bill if he could too, but that would break his heart. Beverly came from somewhere she hadn’t told anyone but Richie… All Mike knew was asking it was a quick way to get a swift kick in the ass. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Stanley… Even thinking the name made Mike’s heart clench up. He was a good man, a good friend. The best, honestly. He had been more than that with Bill, and it had always made him dart his eyes to the other corner of the room when they had sat too close. It hadn’t been out of hate or ignorance it… It was honestly jealousy. The kind of nasty green monster that disgusted Mike he even had. He had wanted to be there in his place, to be the one holding Bill close at night. To kiss his tears away, to do his best to fix everything he could for him. To make his life better, to make it easier. He had to stop himself constantly from being too protective, too defensive of Bill. It made no sense, when he acted this way. Mike caught himself, only Ben holding his eyes for too long after he did it. He knew, but did anyone else? It didn’t matter, it wouldn’t change it. It wouldn’t change how Mike would linger for a little too long in the doorway to watch Bill work on something. It wouldn’t change how sometimes he lost track of time, just listening to the sound his pen would make on the paper. He didn’t want to replace Stanley to Bill, he just… He just wanted to be something to him. Anything to him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The losers burned out so many nights, staring up at ceilings or stars. All of them felt more at home with each other than they ever thought they could have. Friends, Mike genuinely liked to believe he would have made in any life before this, and any life he would make again after it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was always going to be something to threaten that. To threaten his friends, his family, his way of life. And that was what got Mike to understand his grandfather a little more. Leroy Hanlon was not like this by accident. The world had turned him hard, and given him no other choice. He had turned on a hand that had done nothing but beat him, and protected those who had no other choice. He understood humanity needed each other to survive, to thrive. Mike only had to think of Bill’s face before moving to action, and he would find the trigger pressing itself. It didn’t take any energy then, any kind of pain or hesitation. It was to protect him, to protect everything he meant to him and everyone else. Mike didn’t want any more Stanley’s in his friends, but he couldn’t stop himself from pushing his friends sometimes. Too far occasionally. But they moved well as a unit. Together.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mike would give his life for this hell to be over. He would give it a thousand times over for a thousand lifetimes. But life wasn’t easy like that. He wasn’t Stanley, and he didn’t have some magical way to protect his friends. He had decisions that were going to get harder and more complicated the longer he was alive. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>All Mike could do for now was close his eyes, and listen to the sound of his own breathing. Count the beats, and hope he would get some sleep tonight. Hope the next day Bill would be there again, two cups of coffee in his hands and help him make their plans for the day. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>dont worry mike will be plenty relevant again in the romance department,,,,,, just not from his point of view</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. beverly: fire</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>mixed some lore from the last of us again for inspo! this is probably the heaviest chapter to write, but i purposefully stayed away from certain themes with this that i did Not want to do that happen in canon</p><p>!!chapter warnings!! cannibalism ment</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>How long does it take before a hunter becomes a cannibal? Is it the man that makes the monster, or the monster that makes the man?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beverly Marsh had grown up with her father, Alvin Marsh and not known much else. Her mother had died long before any kind of crisis had broken out over the earth. She had killed herself, but Beverly had found that out only when people showed their darkest colors to her. Only when her father had something to win from her suffering, did she find out. Only then, did he care enough to mention it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hunters were survivors who lived outside of the government’s control. The kind of people who had risen up against the system that betrayed them. Was it a success? No. No way in hell was this how anyone was supposed to live. Hunters lived like dogs who had bitten their masters. Living life with reckless abandon and biting all who came near them. There was a very thick line between them, and how Leroy Hanlon lived. The code of honor among hunters was to do whatever it took to survive. Alvin Marsh was that kind of dog. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the government had moved everyone from Derry to the Hanlon farms, there was no way in hell they could take everyone there. The town, and everyone who had reported to it for safety, were split in half. Those who stayed in Derry were dependent on supplies rationed and controlled completely by the government. This, of course, worked as well as anyone could expect it to. It didn’t work at all. People were suffering and starving, driven to desperate depraved acts. Bev could hardly remember that time, even if it took up the majority of her memories. It was like a dark spot in her brain, everything was blurry there. Of all the sufferings, hunger and loneliness had to be the worst. Those were all Beverly knew before… Well, before the light came in. But that was long off still, her happiness couldn’t be achieved until she had shed more blood, more sweat, and more tears than anyone she knew.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Those desperate men and women, they had turned away from any sort of light, from any sort of good. Like the monsters outside the walls, they turned to killing each other. To killing the government workers who denied them, who worked for corrupted bodies. The newly liberated dogs, maws dripping with a fresh  kill, claimed their previous city back from the government. They lived like that for a time, until they were unable to find food and were left just as hungry as before. They had launched a jealous attack on the Hanlon farm, to be crushed overwhelmingly. Moving back home to lick their wounds, and to turn to humans who passed through looking for security. Before Beverly had even known, supplies on these people were not enough. Their bodies, that’s what her father was keeping in their family home. A home with walls she had known for too long, one the government had granted them and they had spat on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe that made Beverly sound like a bootlicker. The life the government had granted had been equal parts hell and blessing, but whatever it was? It was better than watching her father carve into a body like it was a pumpkin, pulling out strings and guts, shuffling them into the proper pails and buckets. It was enough to fill her nose and make her gag. Every night, seeing him do the same sick work. Beverly didn’t know if it was because Alvin Marsh was the only man depraved enough to offer to cut into bodies, or if their cockroach infested town was the only one filled with people desperate enough to ask for meat from absolutely anywhere.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What difference was there, when humanity turned on itself? How was Beverly supposed to know who the monsters were, when the infected and her neighbors were acting the same? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had refused to eat it. To touch any meal her father put in front of her. Beverly wasn’t sure how she was going to get around it, but she made do as best she could. She made plans, hid things as best she could. She would have given absolutely anything to get out of this hellscape of a town. She heard through the grapevine, through mumbles and whispers that Leroy Hanlon had left his farm, had gone somewhere else. This meant his old land was ripe for the taking, and these bastard hunters were going to move on the government while it was weak to take what they could from them. It sure as hell wasn’t them keeping it all protected.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beverly wasn’t proud of what she did, but the night they all planned to move on these people, she took her bag and she ran. In it she had all the knives she could sneak, all the bullets she could carry. Anything she could slip out of her father's vision for long enough to hide. She had thought she had been sneaky about it, but she wasn’t as far ahead of him as she wanted to be.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alvin Marsh had followed her to the edge of Derry’s new townline, broken smile casting more shadows in the dark. Beverly was backed into a corner, she didn’t have anything else to do. She had two choices, go back with him. Or. To get away, any means necessary.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She did. Beverly Marsh made her way to freedom that night, hands shaking. She puked once leaving the town, horrified at having to lash out at her father like that. She didn’t know if he would bleed out or not. If he would be laying in the shadows at her back, limping after her. Bev wanted to believe he was laying there. She didn’t know if she’d rather him be alive or not, so she just kept running through the woods as fast as she could. Her lungs burned, her heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In working her way through the town, Beverly had picked up a few handy things. One had been a map, one she had slowly snuck away at night to trace over, to give herself the same valuable resource. She had a flashlight in her pocket, but was hesitant to use it and show anyone, or anything else, out there where she was. No one knew where Leroy Hanlon was now, but Beverly would find him. She would find him if it fucking killed her. To be with humanity, that was all she wanted. </span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>It had taken what was close to a month. In which, Beverly had learned more from desperate living than she ever thought she could. How it felt to have to kill something in your hands, to hunt deer and rabbits and squirrels and anything she could get her desperate hands on. She had almost gotten good at it. The thing she was most thankful for, was that it hadn’t been a person she was driven to eat. She would rather die than do something like that, and nights where she had to lay there with her stomach burning in hunger, she was thankful it wasn’t full on someone she could have known, someone she could have loved.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beverly had shown up to Leroy Hanlon’s property's perimeter looking like she had been dragged out of the gates of hell. Her eyes had a fire that matched her hair, and she had stared the guards down, refusing to move until they let her in. There she had told Leroy Hanlon himself in quiet whispers what she had been through, her hands shaking. He had looked at her with dark eyes, sadness there. With a sigh he had taken her in. He had always been going to, but part of him knew how much Beverly had to get whatever was off her chest out. He told the guards what they could be up against, had added it to his plans to help prepare, and had put his grandson in charge of making sure Beverly was taken care of properly. That she was protected tonight, and someone was always where she could call for. The girl wouldn’t need help, she could take care of herself. But damn, if she didn’t deserve to feel like someone would be out there for her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first few days Beverly was with the group, everyone had expected her to be like a hurt animal, but she had really been the opposite. She had opened up like a flower, wanting to know right away what she could do to help. The drive to be with her fellow man and help them do better was stronger than she could put to words. Beverly’s eyes were just as heated as the night she came, only burning now while she smiled and took in all the light she could find. Nothing was perfect, and this camp was far from it but… It was better. Hell, it was so much better. She had people her age here. She was free from shadows of people, whose cores were as rotten as the food they ate. Beverly, for once in a life she had no idea had been so bleak, felt hope with everything around her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beverly knew her new friends didn’t know where she had come from, and she didn’t want to tell them. Not because they would hate her, she was sure they wouldn’t. Rather than fearing the anger or the pity, what she was afraid of is the horror their faces would get twisted in. She wanted to keep them protected. Maybe that was selfish, maybe even a little silly for boys she had just met. But… Beverly didn't want her friends, her new peers, to know there were people like that out there in the world if she could prevent it. She didn’t want Mike to know what his grandfather was so afraid of when he talked about where Beverly came from. She didn’t want Bill to know there were people out there who would have wanted to eat Stanley after he had blown his brain out, that people would have thought burying him was a waste of his body. No one should have to know about people like that if they could help it, and Beverly was going to make damn sure she could help it. She would handle anything with hunters, with those damn cannibals if she could. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t have to be like that… Beverly was trying to make sure she ended every single day on a good note. That no matter how bad things were, she could lay down and close her eyes knowing there was a silver lining. Stanley had died, but at least he had loved first right? Beverly wondered if there was anyone who could look at Bill and not understand what Stan had seen in him. There was a light to him, one she was happy he got to share with Stan while he could. A light Beverly knew Mike lingered on. One she hoped the two would get to share one day, in their quiet moments, loving through the darkest of moments. Beverly was so lucky to see so much love around her, so much she could happily lay down and drown in. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was Richie who had come to Beverly first, which had surprised her. When she had come to this camp, this town, and had known no one. He had come to her room one night, and knocked on the door. He was grinning ear to ear, behind glasses that made his eyes look huge. His dark crazy hair was actually well kept this close, and he had a look in his eyes Beverly would never forget. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, do you wanna help me piss Bill off?” Richie had asked, laughing at the absurdity of his own words. Beverly hadn’t been able to help herself from laughing at that, too. There was something so mundane about it, and for a moment she felt like she could close her eyes and pretend she was actually her age. Like she was in college, with friends and pranks and boyfriend drama. They snuck out that night, and flipped the sheets on Bill and stole as much of his clothes as they could get their hands on. He had woken up cursing, and had to chase them. People had been mad, but maybe not mad enough. Everyone who had come down on them had a smile in their eyes, as if happy they could just see people having fun again. It was days like this Beverly wanted a camera that wasn’t just inside her mind, so she could remember the looks on everyone's faces. Could keep it with her when she went back to dark places, could remember then how it felt to laugh so hard it hurt. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. ben: fuck</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>chapter warnings!! major character death :(</p><p>this chapter was hard to write, hopefully richie comes faster and then he'll finish it out</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>When Ben woke up, he was tucked tightly into a bed in god knows where. It was dim in the room and when he looked out a window he could see the sun was dancing its final goodbye for the day across the sky. What a day… One Ben had missed without even realizing. What had happened?</span>
</p><p>
  <span> Last he could remember the group was here, looking for supplies. They had split into three small groups with plans to meet up later. Mike, Richie, and Eddie made up the first group, Ben was with Beverly, and Bill and Stan were together. Ben remembered waiting at the rendezvous point for the three of them… And then things got hazy. He did a quick look over of his body, and felt dull soreness work through him. Already? God. It would be even worse in the morning, then. Soreness was always worse the next day. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But. What else? Oh, Stanley-- he hadn’t shown up. Richie came with Eddie and Mike, to where Ben and Beverly were already waiting. Bill had come… Later. Much later. Two hours past when they were supposed to give up on him and move on. But of course, they didn’t give up. They were just about to put it to a vote if they were going to chase after them. Then, Bill’s face broke through the leaves, face sweating and red. His eyes were swollen, and he looked his friends in the eyes before turning and losing the contents of his stomach. No one said anything, they didn’t know what to begin with. Mostly it was questions, confused eyes burning into Bill’s back. Ben had known though. Had seen it in his desperate wild eyes, that Bill was counting his friends. Making sure all of them were alive, desperate to see them breathing. It must mean that Stan… Stan was… Ben couldn’t finish that thought.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If there was one thing Ben was good at, it was paying attention to other people. He felt like he could see his friends in a deeper cut than they could see themselves. The only person who might notice others as much as he did was Richie, but that was for another time</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laying back flat, Ben stared up at the slowly rotting ceiling. It was cracking with dust and disrepair, but what he thought might be the biggest crime of all was the fact that it was a popcorn ceiling. Awful stuff. If Ben listened hard enough, he could hear faint voices in the other room. They could be talking about him, or maybe whatever happened… It could have been anything, everything.But there was one thing that was for sure, and that was whoever had to be talking about Stan. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ben closed his eyes so tight with emotion black shots shot across. His breaths came out shallowly. He might have been with the gang for the least amount of time, but that didn’t change how much Ben loved his new friends. It was like a bond of brothers, the kind his father had talked about soldiers having in war before he had passed away. Everything seemed to go in hyper time. Everything happening all at once. All too fast, yet all too slow. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ben could remember the day he had met everyone. How his family had come to the camp all together. They had come in a small group, traveling from what was left of the original Derry compound. They had fled here after Bill, after Beverly—even getting here after the gang had found Eddie like a lost puppy. They had only moved when they had no other choice, Ben’s mother not wanting to move him or anyone else until it was absolutely necessary. Stan had been there, always there. It was something Ben didn’t even realize he hadn’t been appreciating enough. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Life was short. Nothing had proved that more than going back into the world. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ben rose up in his seat, holding back a groan. It was somewhere in his core that was hurting. Pushing back the sheet, he checked himself over. Whatever had happened, he was already bruising. His body was lit up in yellows and deep purples, covering his entire lower abdomen. It was almost like a flower, and Ben decided to think of it like that. He got up from the bed, doing his best to ignore the pain, and pulled his shirt back on that had been sitting across the bed. He walked carefully, bare feet sinking into the slowly rotting carpet. It was damp in that way only shady motels were, something Ben might only know past the apocalypse but was still completely true.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He made his way to the door and gently opened it, eyes darting around until he saw the friends he had left on the couch all sitting together, minus Richie who Ben caught standing up by a window and looking out. Before he had entered, there had been soft voices, but now? Silence fell over the room. Ben didn’t think it was his appearance, but rather that something had changed. The day had to begin again, things had to move from here, move from Stan.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like always, Ben’s eyes lingered without thought on Beverly for a moment. The light from the morning was catching in her hair. Ben wished this was another life, where she could sit with a mug of coffee or tea in her hand while she read a book. Instead, Beverly had to sit back and think about how Stan had just shot himself in the head. How Bill had run himself almost into the ground to come meet his friends. How—It was all coming back to Ben now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the gang had moved forward, and when the infected had caught up to them. How Ben had to dive in front of Bill, slamming the steel bat in his hands hard as he could into the side of the head of one of the infected reaching for him. It was hell moving from there. Ben, as the closest to Bill, holding him upright, his exhaustion catching up to him. Bill had buried Stan, before meeting up with them, something far riskier than he should have done alone but, hell, if Ben didn’t admire him for it. It was what had held him up so long. The giant bruise had come from Ben grabbing Bill and doing his best to get him out of the line of a bite and throwing his body into the front hood of a car in the process. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When was this hell going to end? Ben, in the dark recess of his heart, couldn’t help but wish sometimes that he could just give up. People like this, friends like these, ones who he loved with his entire heart… It made it impossible for him. There was no leaving friends like this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beverly…. Bev alone, Ben was sure he would do anything for. </span>
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<hr/><p><br/>
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  <span>Running, it felt like burning. </span>
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  <span>Ben knew he should appreciate running somewhere deep down, appreciate being able to push his body to its limits. To enjoy being here, being free. Being alive. Fuck. There wasn’t time to think about that right now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Behind Ben was a whole mess of problems. The gang had finally gotten Richie to his feet, dragging him screaming to their car. A car that had been a stupid move to begin with, something loud and noisy that brought all the infected around towards it. One that might have done them more harm than good. Sure, it was filled with all the supplies they could fit and attach to the head of it. But…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bill was on one side of Richie, his knuckles turning white from force trying to both haul Richie who was fighting him, and to keep his own mouth shut. Ben could see it in his eyes, how he got this pain. He understood what Richie was screaming about. He knew his pain better than anyone else here, and he hated what he had to do in response to it. Mike had his other side, eyes focused ahead on the car while him and Bill worked in tandem to drag Richie there. It was their one chance at escape. Beverly had made it to the car before everyone, the driver's seat open while she was turned towards what was chasing them. Her bright eyes focused, and all Ben could think while holding the rear that if this was the last thing he saw, he would die happy. Bev was notching arrows with a calm patience, her archery skills from this distance more deadly. She would only take out the bullets for up close if she needed it. Ben knew she was doing her best, but they had to get to that car now. Richie wasn’t helping, but who could blame him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ben wanted to hit the ground screaming right now too, to drag himself back into that building and drag Eddie’s body out but… It was a lost cause. There was no way he was alive, there wasn’t a chance in hell of that long before they had to leave. Now his body was just going to be some feast for whatever infected were left behind, there wasn’t going to be any Eddie to recover. Either he would be turned or. Well, there wouldn’t be anything left to turn. Maybe that would be for the best. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Out of everyone, Ben probably knew the best about Richie and Eddie. Had seen how the two lingered around each other, had seen the look in Richie’s eyes when he looked at Eddie long before that. Like a man who was counting his seconds, like every moment there was a small piece of agony he hadn’t known he could feel. The yearning he felt, it must have been a small fire. Ben understood, or felt like he could get that. Beverly… Ben thought of the fire in her eyes, the way the sun caught her hair. Yeah, he got it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They finally made it to the car and Ben turned to do his best to hold off what he could while they got Richie in the car.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What he saw, it wasn’t that new. It was clawing rotten hands, nails turned black and red. Maws dripping blood and liquid that Ben couldn’t even begin to guess what was inside of. Their eyes milked over, the white transparent shine of the dead. It wasn’t a pretty sight, and even after all this time Ben felt his stomach flip over in horror and disgust. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ben!” Beverly yelled behind him, and an arrow landed in the eye of an infected in his blind spot.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Get in the fucking car, dude!” Bill yelled, muffled from the inside as he tried to hold Richie down. He was calming down, but there was still something so panicked in his eyes. With the three back seats filled, Bev in the driver’s seat, Ben made fast work of rolling off the back bumper. He kicked an infected that was trying to climb up in it, and made a mad dash for the passenger seat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was close, it was all too fucking close.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. richie: never forever</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this is fun i say, writing is fun.</p><p>chapter warnings: grief, flashbacks</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Hold your grief, release it, come to terms or don’t-- nothing touches the fact of the lifeless body.” <em> Heaven’s Coast </em>, by Mark Doty</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>What does it mean to be alive? Is it the breath in your chest? The firing of neurons in your brain, wiring electric pulses throughout your body? Is living feeling? Does a pain so harsh, that burns so brightly it makes you beg for the chance to be numb, count as being alive?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Does the kind of life, where you feel like you’re running in a dark forest you can't escape, ragged desperate breaths burning as they race to get in and out of your chest, count as living at all? When every day of living is spent fighting for that ‘honor’? Is it living at all, when you simply want to survive and cannot even begin to thrive? A world that spends every day chewing you up and spitting you out, that’s hardly a place to live.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Agony so consuming it means you scream until your throat is raw, putting everyone you love at risk and you can’t even think twice about it. A body that’s moving without being told to, screaming and fighting. Clawing in the same way those fungal covered animals are. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Richie didn’t know what it meant to be alive, or even if he was anymore. When he got back to their camp, he went into his room and closed the door with a faint click. He made it to the edge of his bed before he began sobbing again. Clenching dark brown blankets, breathing in the scent of lived in sheets that had mixed with the smoke from his own cigarettes. His heart felt heavier then, because he couldn’t even smell Eddie. He had been so consuming, he couldn’t even find him here. Eddie.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie… </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When was that name going to stop feeling real? Would it be tonight, when Richie had to spend it alone quietly mumbling his name between tears? Or would it be tomorrow, the next week, the next month? When everyone here moved from trying to mourn, to trying to forget, to move on. To celebrate the living, instead of looking at a dead man in a sea of thousands upon thousands of others.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <br/>
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</p><p>
  <span>It was a candle this time, tall and light blue. The wax had been mixed with smells in ways Richie could never understand, let alone how this could happen with the way the world is right now. He appreciated it, though, when Beverly had made him this candle that smelled like fresh rain. As it burned gently next to his bed, Richie used his hand to brush Eddie’s hair to the side of his face. He looked over at Richie, glaring as best he could with his large brown eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Richie had a hard time not smiling when he did that. He wasn’t sure what it was about Eddie, but he always found it so easily to last. Little laughs, happy laughs. They weren’t from something being funny, and they bubbled up often without his say so. They could be kissing, all tangled up and flushed against each other while the air held a heat between them. Their bodies would be pressed together, and their mouths would be moving hot and quick, and Richie would still feel a little laugh come out. It had gotten him in trouble more than once, but he couldn’t help it. There was something so complete about every second he spent with Eddie, something so wonderful and fulfilling. It was like everything was perfect here, and outside that door there was no infection. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Life, Richie had decided, existed in moments like these. Moments so fine and picturesque he tried to always write them down in his mind. The sort of moment he would feel heavy in his heart years later, even in the best of times. A yearning for it back would always be there, so he tried his best to be in that moment. To feel Eddie as best as he could, wrapped in his arms while he tried stubbornly to read a book. Richie had insisted, like always, that Eddie let him hold him. It was the best kind of snuggle when he wouldn’t let him, when his face would screw up in mild annoyance because he couldn’t get comfortable. Maybe Richie shouldn’t feel so happy about it, but he knew Eddie enjoyed the stubborn and constant attention. Enjoyed how much Richie wanted him in any way, how much he wanted to be surrounded by him. Even if it meant he was trying to read a book by candle light, and his boyfriend wouldn’t let him get comfortable or where he could read it more easily.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Eddie had been in that store, on the ground with Richie’s busted bike, the first thing Richie had thought when he saw him was how fucking small he was. The other, of course, had been a realization this was where his bike had gone off to. But Eddie, he was really fucking small then. Not just because he was shorter than Richie, which he couldn’t really blame him for (even if he did tease him for it). He was thin, thin like he wasn’t eating. That shouldn’t be shocking, considering the state of the world. But it pulled at Richie’s heart. He wanted to scoop him up and put him on the back of a bike that didn’t work anymore, and drive him straight into the nearest kitchen. His hair was greasy, and it was probably hell to get a chance to bathe for this kid. His eyes were wide and half crazed, jumping between each of them in a panic, while clutching to a shotgun Richie was sure would hurt him just as much to shoot. The damn thing was covered in rust, and looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in god knows how long.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie had changed, bit by bit. When they had talked him into coming back with them. He had stayed with Maggie Tozier, Richie’s mom, before they were able to get him situated on his own. He seemed to do better with a mother figure around, and he worked hard to help her. Richie couldn’t help but linger too long in doorways those days, looking for an excuse to stay.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Richie took a page turning as an excuse to dip his head down and kiss Eddie on the cheek. He did quick pecks, kissing him again and again, laughing when Eddie tried to push his chest to get him away. He wiggled in his arms before giving up, glaring at him once more instead. Richie saw the corners of his lips tug just a bit, and kept going in his kisses.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This was one moment he never wanted to leave, to be lost in it forever. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>might come back to this universe, for some reddie snippets in the future. might do a pwp even. they deserve..... happiness.<br/>next thing im writing tho is not zombies im sick of making myself suffeR</p><p>big thank you to my friends for their support in writing this, from editing to pep talking me through discord or texts. you know who you are, and i adore you</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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